In September 1944, with the Allies eager to finish the job begun with the Normandy landings, 35,000 U.S. and British troops parachuted into Nazi territory in the Netherlands. The controversial offensive, Operation Market Garden, was conceived by British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery to secure the lower Rhine—Germany's last great natural barrier in the west. Allied soldiers outnumbered Germans two-to-one, but they were poorly armed against German Panzer tanks and suffered devastating casualties. In detail, Lloyd Clark compares this operation with another Montgomery orchestrated in March 1945 that reversed the previous disaster, and finds more to admire in common soldiers than in their leadership.